Ah, the benefits of having written a post the night before. It’s not really how I intended to go about it, but it ended up being a long post in the word document. Well, I didn’t intend it to even be a blog post, but I got to about 3/4 and thought ‘this would make a good 3-part blog post’, so there you go.
I’m going to be generous and back-link the other parts at the beginning AND end of the post. So here’s the first part if you want to read it, to know what I’m on about: part 1
Now, onward, to victory (and cake)!
Last post, I discussed the pros and cons of me keeping Children of Fire for either the series or just the first book. I now believe ‘for the series’ would be best. That leaves me with options for the individual books to follow some thematic pattern.
Now, what about the (name) and the (object/event/person-title/person/etc) theme?
Examples: Adam Addams and the Atomic Angel, David Dresden And The Cybernetic Alien Ducks (yep, made those ones up just now) and a certain series about a certain boy wizard named Harry.
Jarred and the Sorceress
Jarred and the Elementals
Jarred and the Shadow Men
Jarred and the Dragon
Short stories, based on this formula:
David the Demon Slayer
Jessica the ______
Adam the ______
Rachel the Sorceress
Sarah the ______ (exorcist?)
Nick the Shadow Chaser/Dancer/other term to denote intimate relationship with shadows)
Andaron the Shape Shifter
And so on.
Makes sense, actually. Just feels plain to me.
Tesla Squad and the… (all of the above, for the novellas anyway). Not bad, I think, but not great. It’s unique though – how many people don’t know who Nikola Tesla is? MANY. I know maybe three friends who do, and I had to explain to one of them, who is actually my brother, and I have to explain a LOT of things to him. Most of my writer’s group don’t actually know, either. Jarred named the group after him, due to his own power over lightning and the fact that he’s the leader of the group so he gets to name it. (A group of superheroes must have a name. Obviously.)
Other ideas:
The Tesla Files
The Tesla Codex
The Tesla Chronicles
The Tesla Contracts
And so on in that vein.
Only issue is that people – at least those who know of Tesla – would get confused and think it’s literally about the scientist (there is SO going to be a time travelling short story where Jarred gets to meet Nikola Tesla, or tries to!). That’s both good and bad. Good because it promotes the question “where does this come from?” and I can give people an explanation or even better, a short bio and picture (with the caption ‘badass motherfucking scientist’). Bad because, well, I just said that it would confuse people (idiots and intelligent people alike) because it makes you think it’s about Nikola Tesla himself. It’s not. It’s about a group of 5-minutes-in-the-future mercenary superheroes, who are led by a guy who can control and produce lightning, who happens to be a massive fan of everything badass, which of course includes the first scientist to be a fucking genius when it comes to electricity… and isn’t very well known today, because everything thinks Edison discovered electricity, when he was a pretender with a business sense. The Oatmeal or The Weekly Badass WILL get a free linkage from me at the start of every book. This all means moolah either way. In fact, if I link to the Oatmeal thing for the Tesla Museum, that would be absolutely awesome and philanthropic of me. I might even get a free pass one day, from them, and a few freebies from The Oatmeal. This could be a great win for histrionics. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I think that’s enough for one post, at just over 650 words. Stay tuned for part 3.
Don’t they teach kids about Nikola Tesla in school anymore? I swear I learned about him in grade 7 or 8. (Random aside I’ve already recommended ‘Atomic Robo’ to you haven’t i? The graphic novel set in an alternate reality where Nikola Tesla built an atomic robot which proceeds with hilarity and awesome and he even fights Cthulu at one point. If I haven’t I have now).
I think most potential readers will read your blurb after reading the title and be able to figure out it’s not about Tesla himself so you shouldn’t get too many mix-ups i would think. But then I also thought everyone who did high school science would have at least a vague knowledge of Tesla, so i might be the odd duck here.
I only learnt about him from a friend, a few years ago (roughly 8 since highschool). My highschool was poor though, and any money that did come in went straight to making it look prettier. I also can’t remember jack from most classes – English, Science, Maths, Art, and especially Drama and Music – so I guess I qualify for Unreliable Narrator in that regard? My friend told me about The Weekly Badass, which had a page on him.
I did remember Tesla Coils from for Red Alert, however.
Atomic Robo sounds awesome. I need to read it some day.
And it WAS in fact written by the 8bit theatre guy(s)! http://www.nuklearpower.com